Eleven

"He is the god who became man, the man who became God," she says, though she knows it's not an answer to El's question. "If he is kind, it is by his will alone. If he is cruel, it is a rebuke well-deserved. It cannot be...conventional questions of nice or mean don't enter into it. It's impossible."

Harrow thinks of the Emperor's kindly smile, the tea and the biscuits and the frayed collars of his shirts. The patience in his every dealing with her, even at her most disgraceful, and the tone of his voice when he'd said You'd make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark. It sickens her as badly now as it had then, a lurch in her stomach that has her wishing for something sharp and brittle to cast herself onto. In the absence of nothing else, she digs her nails into her palm, lengthening them just enough to hurt.

"Yes," she says. "He was nicer than I deserved."